tax and reports on capital expenses

[Shane Litherland]

Hi Frank,
Yes, appreciate how varied the world of taxation is :-) though, in the
end, my thoughts/comments were more about having better search options
in gnucash to accommodate user variability, rather than solve my issue
specifically... below:

On Mon, 2011-09-12 at 15:38 +0200, Frank H. Ellenberger wrote:
> Hi Shane,
> 
> because it is hard to understand - every country seems to have some very 
> special tax rules - just a few ideas:
> 
> 1. Can you file a link to the tax form?
> 2. Does a cash flow report of your A/P give you some useful information?
> 
My apologies, I am a bit vague on #1. I don't make use of any of the
internal gnucash 'tax-related' settings, once I looked and it seemed
mostly USA/Canada stuff, I'm in Australia plus have a generally basic
account book so skipped that option. Or did you mean a link on the web
to the tax info I alluded too? surely you don't want to get a headache
reading that sort of stuff? ;-)

#2 I can answer. Whilst a cash flow report wasn't the solution I chose,
I could get the answer via an 'intermediate' account like A/P or even
the GST accounts, by choosing a 'multi-line' option in the report
settings. That would then show me all I needed. But it also meant a fair
bit of time copy/paste to a spreadsheet and remove all the split parts
that I didn't need, to pare it back to the expense splits only.
e.g a multi line report might show:
A/P amount
a few splits for different expense accounts
a split for the tax amount
maybe even a split for a deposit or private amount.

When I was just after the expense amount, but *only* expense amounts
that had a tie to a given tax liability account.

> Am Freitag, 26. August 2011 um 04:58:07 schrieb Shane Litherland:
> > In a basic scenario with split txns e.g.
> >
> > >From accounts payable   $430 (total bill)
> >
> > to expense:office        $200 (taxable items)
> > to expense:office        $100 (non-taxable items)
> > to GST account            $20 (tax)
> > to private expense       $110 (non-business amount*)
> >
> > (*private includes a tax amount that is not part of business accounting;
> > which makes these items different in character from business items that
> > are tax-free.)
> > (Similar situations arise if the above figures had separate GST splits
> > i.e.
> > to GST:capital $10
> > to GST:non-cap $10)
> 
> 3. Does it help to clone the structure of the GST tree in the expense tree, 
> like:
> expense:business:taxable:capital
> e:b:t:non-cap
> e:b:non-taxable
> e:private
> and move your current accounts in this tree

Yes, this option was one I considered early on, but I felt it would
bloat my expense tree more than I wanted, having majority of accounts
replicated in each of the capital/non-capital/private type main
accounts.
I was happier to spend a bit of time via a spreadsheet to get my results
rather than implement such a setup. Although the method you outline
would most likely be the suitable approach for a business account
structure of any respectably busy business. I just don't make that
grade ;-)

In the other direction though, if I had not used A/P or A/R at all, and
been a basic home-finance user putting entries direct into
income/expense/assets etc, then the txns probably would have included
direct splits to/from tax liability accounts and not via separate
postings in/out of A/P, and this whole issue wouldn't have surfaced!

> 
> just my 2¢
> Frank
> 
A good 2c, even given the current Aussie dollar exchange rate ;-)

As I did play with the reporting options considerably in my efforts to
get the info I needed, it did seem that the essentials for diversifying
report potential are already in place, just that at the moment, filter
criteria only look at txns in entirety to/from the account/s being
reported, whereas if the same workings assessed each split, more
in-depth analysis of accounts would be achievable with a few clicks in
report options. That's probably what it all boils down to!

I'm considering filing an enhancement request on bugzilla, but I'd like
to refine my critique and suggested tweaks... at the moment I think I'd
just sound like a complainer ;-) A few more late nights on the issue and
I should present my case better!

Regards,
Shane.